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DETROIT – Max Holloway isn’t concerned about who is standing across the octagon at UFC 218, because he plans on taking out the entire featherweight division, anyway.

Holloway originally was scheduled to fight Frankie Edgar in Saturday’s headliner, which takes place at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit and airs on pay-per-view-view following prelims on FS1 and UFC Fight Pass. “The Answer” suffered an injury less than a month from the event, though, and was replaced by Jose Aldo (26-3 MMA, 9-2 UFC).

UFC 218 goes down almost exactly six months after Holloway battered Aldo for a third-round TKO to claim the 145-pound title at UFC 212 in June. Holloway admits a fresh foe in Edgar would’ve been nice, but he felt an Aldo rematch was going to happen regardless, so he’s not worried about the order of his challengers.

“I got 250 cupcakes coming in (for my post weigh-in meal),” Holloway said at today’s UFC 218 open workout. “Who doesn’t like the new flavor? I want to try a new flavor. But, hey, there’s the other ones, the same ones. I’ll eat them again. These guys are like cupcakes to me. They’re all on the menu.”

The complexion of an immediate rematch is always interesting in MMA, but even more so at the championship level. Aldo never has lost a rematch in his career, which means the Brazilian has a knack for making the appropriate changes between fights.

Aldo claims he had a leg injury for the UFC 212 fight, which prevented him from unleashing his powerful leg kicks with the tenacity he wanted. “Scarface” said he’ll implement arguably his best weapon even more in the rematch, but Holloway appears unconcerned.

“Time tells all,” Holloway said. “That’s the beautiful thing about the sport. You can do all this, you can say all this, but when you get in there, you can’t lie. You can’t lie to yourself. This guy is talking about leg kicks. He’s out there training with Mikey Garcia. Mikey Garcia comes and calls me out. What the hell are these guys talking about? If you can’t beat them you try to fight them.”

“I was expecting leg kicks (at UFC 212), but I was expecting him to shoot, too,” he continued. “All these strikers. They always tell me, ‘This guy is going to strike with me.’ Name one guy who fully struck with me. All these guys try to strike with me, and they end up looking for takedowns.”

For the better part of a decade Aldo was considered the best 145-pound fighter in the world. Holloway’s long-term goal is to take that status for himself, but he knows there’s still a lot of ground to make up before he gets there. Putting together back-to-back wins over Aldo would be a big deal, but even then, Holloway said he won’t be where he wants.

“Beating him for a second time – I still got a bunch to catch up with him,” Holloway said. “He’s got a bunch of records, and those records are meant to be broken. He had his time. There’s levels to this. He had his era. This is the ‘Blessed Era.’”

For more on UFC 218, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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